Elsewhere: election reflections

Like all of you, I am tired of the election and happy it is over. For better or worse, elections have consequences. This one will be no different.

The big losers are children in the womb. Individual “choices” will be made continuing to snuff-out over 3,000 lives per day in the US alone. In addition to the immediate death of the child, long lasting (possibly eternal) effects will be felt by the mother and others directly involved. Reversing the faulty legal basis for this will now take much, much longer as more intransigent pro-abortion judges are certain to be appointed to the Supreme Court over the next 4 years.

The next set of losers are families who want to protect the sanctity of marriage. Their children will be taught in school that homosexuality is good and normal. Their businesses will be forced to participate (photographers, bakeries, wedding halls, etc.) in these unnatural unions. Coercive pressure will be applied to churches to perform “gay weddings.” Discrimination laws will be perverted to accomplish this. Do not believe anything you have been told about conscience protections, as we have seen again and again, they will be false.

All people of faith are big losers as “freedom of religion” (to live by your faith) becomes “freedom of worship” (something you can do only privately). Religious charities and institutions will shrink and be poorly replaced (if at all) by radically secular, bloated government programs.

There are other big losers too, starting with our children. They will inherit an enormous debt. That debt will be a permanent drag on the economy, impacting their quality of life in numerous ways. We will exchange a broken, but working healthcare system for an even more expensive, dysfunctional bureaucratic one. In the short term, we will all suffer through a recession that will not end.

Steven Mosher shares his thoughts on the election at Catholic Lane. He asks “Question: What Can we Expect From a Second Obama Administration on the Life Issues?”

The U.S. has gone over the tipping point. It happened years and years ago, but the evidence for it is in the reelection of Obama.

Sure, Romney lost by a fairly small margin, popular vote-wise. But upon what principles were people voting for him? Based on the correct understanding of the order of truths? Largely, no, and that’s more evidence of the problem.

For example, how many Republicans believe that the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death, is the most important issue? Probably 5%, if that.

So while those who voted for Obama certainly have a wrong understanding of natural law and the order of truths, not to mention divine revelation, the majority of those who voted Republican similarly have a wrong understanding of these things. Many of them don’t give a lick about 3,500 children aborted each day in our country, or about euthanasia, embryo-destructive stem cell research, traditional marriage, and so on.

They were more likely voting with the idea that the economy was the main issue, or because they think Romney will be better for their pocketbook.

And in spite of the bad economy, the ineptitude that left four of our people dead at Benghazi, the forcing of people to pay for others’ contraception, a (slight) majority of people in our country voted for Obama again.

Truth is, we as a country have cut ourselves adrift from the moorings of natural law and divine revelation. Our ship, rudderless in the ocean, will eventually hit a big wave and founder. It is not a question of if, but of when, and reelecting Obama just speeds the day. On balance, Romney would not have slowed this catastrophe by much, but he was the lesser of the two evils.

The second force was David Axelrod and the campaign machine. I stand in awe at what they pulled off. They managed to push considerably more Democrats than Republicans to the polls (38-32 percent margin), closer to the 2008 turnout that favored Obama than the 2010 mid-term turnout that favored Republicans. Because they did, the predictions of an easy Romney victory by the likes of Dick Morris, Michael Barone, George Will, and Newt Gingrich (and myself) were dead wrong. We were certain that pollsters were oversampling Democrats. The pro-Republican, pro-Romney, and anti-Obama enthusiasm we were seeing was extremely intense. It was inconceivable to us that it could be overcome by a higher Democrat turnout. Somehow, however, it was, obliterating Romney’s five-point victory among independents. It erased Romney’s 50-49 percent edge in the final polls by Gallup and Rasmussen.

I stand in stunned disbelief. David Axelrod, you are a miracle worker.

For historical perspective, consider this: No president since FDR in 1940 won reelection with an unemployment rate above 7.1 percent. And for FDR, that number was a huge improvement from four years earlier.

How did Obama and his team overcome this? The answer: they successfully blamed it on George W. Bush, with Bill Clinton aiding and abetting the process. There were no limits to how much they blamed Bush, and how much it worked. The Democratic base swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

Finally, Father John Hollowell talks about his call to the priesthood and the future of the Church:

I’m a bigger fan of authentic peace, but I’d rather have a battle than surface level passive-aggressive “peace” that simply masks evil. I’ve seen, in 3.5 years of priesthood, that perhaps a battle would do us all some good. If the stats hold true, 40% of Catholics who go to Mass every week just stood in open defiance of their bishops and the Church in voting in the affirmative for a candidate who:

supports redefining marriage

supports forcing the Church to do something it will never do

is for abortion through all 9+ months of pregnancy

is for the government helping people procure abortions if they can’t afford one

provides for the destruction of human embryos for research

Please draw me up a candidate who could more completely embody the opposite of Catholicism.

The Catholic Church in the United States is a cage that needs rattling, and the coming battle will provide just such a shake-up. The days of bishops and cardinals yucking it up with anti-Catholic politicians will soon be at an end. The days of bishops and cardinals wagging fingers at anti-Catholic “catholic” politicians and telling them not to cross this line again… and then redrawing the line further back… those days will soon be at an end.

And I guess what I’m saying is that there is a lazy part of me that prefers comfort and wishes it never had to come to blows like this surely will… but there is another part of me that realizes God is doing something in the hearts of faithful priests and Catholics and I think we’re on the edge of something that will be unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace. I’ve come not to bring peace but rather the sword.” — Jesus Christ. He brings the sword because the sword wakes people up, and it is better to be awakened at the last moment so that one can still repent than it is for a person to gain the whole world but lose his soul.

Comments

Devin Rose: “For example, how many Republicans believe that the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death, is the most important issue? Probably 5%, if that.”

Where on earth does he get this figure? I am a Republican primarily for this one issue, absolutely the most important and nonnegotiable for me. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Republican leadership may be wavering, but the majority of Republicans are not. That’s why this issue is in the party platform and why the party’s candidates have to take the pro-life position. And you may have noticed that the other party is actively promoting abortion in every possible way.

I wonder what would have happened if enough Democrats had left their party when it first turned toward the pro-abortion position, many years ago? Would we now have two major parties that both defend life? We will never know.

I do know some pro-life people who don’t vote pro-life and who don’t consider it the main issue; they are Democrats.

Good points Jeannine. Personally, I have strong opinions on healthcare, helping the poor, fair taxes, fixing the economy, size of government, etc. – but absolutely nothing trumps life itself. I hope Devin is wrong about his low estimate (I took it as frustration).

In my opinion, if Republicans really want to see their base decimated, they need only to abandon this issue. That would only force us determined pro-lifers to find or create an alternative (regardless if we were otherwise Republican minded or not).

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